These are really cute, but - and I know how annoying this is - the Japanese in icon #18 of the second set reads - uh, well, not "auron" like you were probably going for.

I just wanted to toss you a heads up. |D;

EDIT: Just to be more clear - in katakana, Auron's name is indeed written アーロン, which is more or less "Aaron," but whatever - the second character isn't really a character, but a sound-lengthening - uh, symbol? Anyway, when written left-to-right, this is at once clear and no problem when reading - the problem is that 一, a character looking EXACTLY THE SAME, which stands for "one" ("ichi") etc. When writing vertically, you'd actually turn the lengthening-thing (|) as well, to show you are elongating the a and not writing the identical-looking kanji for "one."

I know, you didn't ask for tl;dr. I'll slink away now - I just wanted to point it out. ^^;

I think I can figure out how to poke Photoshop to get the right Kanji. As you may have guessed, I copied/pasted from a site with his name written in Japanese, then hit carriage returns. Gotta be some way to flip it (and, possibly, the font has verticals as well as horizontal versions... I shall investigate.)

I love the fact that the angles in his coat and glasses often pick up the contours of his name in Kanji. Not identical, but there's enough silhouette echoes, especially in the "A" part, that it always seems to fit visually.

Every time I try to crop/play with that particular sequence, the lighting/contrast gives me fits. That time my poking about with sliders rendered something that reminded me of a block print or ink painting, so I was trying to go for a calligraphic effect.

Of course there's folks out there who are much better at making purty icons than I am, so I should stick to silly, where it doesn't matter if it's not as artistic! But FFX's visuals are SO lush, I adore it, and keep trying to capture it.

There is an easy way to flip to write vertically in photoshop - you just click the text button and the little menu should appear.

I get what you mean, re, super dark scenes. I have that problem (and the problem of never being able to find good quality images in general asdfghjkl;;;;;). Have you tried using a screen/soft light combo? That's the tried-and-true cheap method, and it usually works okay. But that scene really does suck. |D

There are three alphabets (forgive me if you already know this). Hiragana, for phonetically spelling out words/parts of speech; katakana, the same but for foreign words; and kanji, which is borrowed Chinese characters, with the same meaning but different pronunciations.

Kanji is only used when a word is Japanese. Auron isn't a Japanese word, therefore, it's spelt in katakana and katakana only, as it is "foreign" (or made up, whatever). It's actually written "Aaron" - I don't really know where and when the A was turned to a U.

As for other characters, they all use katakana as well. Yuna is an authentic and not uncommon girl's name in Japanese, but even it is katakana, as it is not intended in game to be "Japanese name" but foreign. The rest of the names are either based on okinawan words (Tidus and Wakka) or are pretty much just made up; therefore, it's all written using the loanword phonetic alphabet (as would be your name, and mine). All of the the proper names in FFX/2 ("Spira," "Yevon", place names *usually*) are written in same way.

I knew there were different alphabets and had heard the terms before, but was being careless in using "kanji." Thanks for clearing that up!

Very interesting! I also didn't realize there was a special "foreign language" alphabet.

A thought: Square uses names from foreign mythologies a lot, sometimes rather carelessly (Shiva isn't much like Shiva), sometimes with more care. I wonder whether the pun on Aaron was an accident or deliberate. Though in that case, it kinda implies that Jecht is Moses. O.o

That little list is the same word, four times. First is romaji, or, roman letters. How we'd read it.

Second is hiragana, the general phonetic alphabet. It originated as a "woman's only" alphabet, but in modern times, it's the standard for all writing - you learn hiragana first in school, then the others. First letter is SO, second, RA.

Third is katakana - it used to be the men's alphabet, and if you look, it's much more angular than the usually curvy hiragana. It's the loan word alphabet now, also sometimes used as sort of the equivalent of bold font.

Fourth is the kanji character for "sky," which is usually read "sora" - that is, sora is the most common reading. It can also be read "ku," among a couple of others, and can also mean "void" as a sort of second meaning. There's a couple other characters that can be read sky, but 空 is usually the one you'll see.

There's also the added complication that some kanji take on entirely different readings (although not meanings) when applied to names; the kanji reading "hana" for flower might be read "yu" in a name, for example. (Sometimes it also seems like parents just randomly pick how it's read - "the character isn't ever read like this, but we're going to say it's read Shou, because we want to.")

As for the name thing - it could be that they picked "Aaron" because it was a well known name, but it could just as easily be SQE going "Eh, this sounds cool." My guess is that it's the same as Rikku - You'd properly spell Rikku "リック" in the game, but it's spelt "リュック," which is "Ryukku" and is still pronounced "Rikku." Conclusion: They just pull this stuff out of their ass.

So, random thing that has nothing to do with icons (I am lame and can't find an email for you anywhere), but I just got done reading Memories of a Guardian (which, by the way, was beautiful as ever-- your descriptions of magic are absolutely sumptuous. I could lose myself in them. To me Lulu as a person is inseparable from the part of herself that is so inherently black mage, and it fits her down to the ground, so to read your descriptions of it makes exquisite reality of what I'd always imagined in my head), and I was curious-- where did those illustrations that look like they came out of an old bestiary come from? Were they Photoshopped, or are those some actual Square-licenced images? Because they're simply beautiful.

But yes, anyway, carry on... I just had to sate my curiosity there.

(Also, btw, I misremembered your journal name as helluin. That journal turns out to be, um... special.)

They're all Square images -- a lot are concept art or embarrassingly copyright-trampling scans from the Ultimania series of books, only available in Japan. I have spent far too much time scouring the web for such images.

However, I then Photoshopped the heck out of them with various filters and textures to make them resemble block prints or hand-drawn illustrations in manuscripts as well as I could.

"Helluin" was the name I meant to take, but I got username and login name reversed when registering, so I've gotten used to auronlu now.

Anyway, I've wound up writing no LOTR fanfic in ages, so "Helluin" isn't appropriate anyway. Being a word from Tolkien, it's gotten snapped up by somebody.